Real Money

Jim Cramer's Best Blogs

Catch up on his thinking on the hottest topics of the past week.

Editor's note: Jim Cramer will present his 2009 stock outlook for the first time at TheStreet.com Investment Conference on Saturday, Oct. 25. Click for details.

Jim Cramer fills his blog on RealMoney every day with his up-to-the-minute reactions to what's happening in the market and his legendary ahead-of-the-crowd ideas. This week he blogged on:

financial survival,

tech's failure, and

the possibility of recovery.

Click here for information on RealMoney, where you can see all the blogs, including Jim Cramer's -- and reader comments -- in real time.

Forget Punishment -- This Is About Survival

Originally published on Monday, Sept. 29, at 9:59 a.m. EDT

Let 'em all go. Let 'em take the hit. Let 'em go under.

I hear it over and over again. I keep hearing it: Let all of the banks go.

And it makes me sick.

It is time to recognize that the banks are the economy. It is time to recognize that this plan was the best thing we could have because we were going to see, and could still see, a total collapse in the economy.

We can be as punitive as we want. We were totally punitive when it came to Lehman. We let them have it, right in the kisser. We really showed them. We really hurt them and their recklessness. And the aftermath of that deliciously punitive action is a worldwide meltdown such that this plan cannot be put into place fast enough. The plan now has so many strings that many banks that should participate in it now won't -- it might be easier to run a bank in a really risky way, plunder it, and hope to get away with it rather than negotiate a sale of it.